April Marks The Centennial Of Armenian Genocide

April 8, 2015 8:58 AM

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Let's listen to some of the back story of the modern Middle East. We've arrived at a moment when the very borders of the region are being strained. The modern day nations of the Middle East grew out of a calamity, the First World War, during and after which the Ottoman Empire, which once ruled the region, collapsed. And we now have a story of the Ottomans' last days. One hundred years ago, in 1915, the Ottoman Empire, centered on present-day Turkey, faced a threat from within. Even as the empire fought a war against Russia, Britain and France, its rulers sensed a threat from an ethnic and religious minority in what is now eastern Turkey. They were the Armenians.

EUGENE ROGAN: They had their own language, their own liturgy as a religious community, a strong sense of history and a territory they aspired to return to as a kind of national historic homeland.